Raffaele Christine Teal, Khosravi Parmis, Parker Alyssa, Godovich Sheina, Rich Brendan, Adleman Nancy
Child Sch. 2021 May 25;43(2):107-117. doi: 10.1093/cs/cdab010. eCollection 2021 Apr.
Early research indicates that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent regulations put children at increased risk of negative mood, anxiety, attention difficulties, and social challenges. Concordantly, these difficulties also are associated with deficits in social-emotional attention in children. On a daily basis, students are required to process and respond to a large amount of complex social-emotional information, including attending to teachers and interacting with peers. These attentional demands and associated stressors have increased as students are required to stare at computer screens during online learning as a result of COVID-19 restrictions. However, there is a dearth of research that investigates the role of social and emotional information on attention in children. The present study assessed the effects of social relevance and emotional valence on attentional demands in children and how functioning is related to individual differences in symptoms and deficits that may be exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that social and emotional information affect attention in children. Task performance also was associated with negative mood, social stress, and attention focus. This study highlights the need for school-based distance learning interventions to help ameliorate negative social-emotional risks of the COVID-19 pandemic in children. Potential effective avenues include mindfulness-based interventions and attention bias modification training.
早期研究表明，新冠疫情及随后的相关规定使儿童出现负面情绪、焦虑、注意力不集中和社交挑战的风险增加。与此一致的是，这些困难也与儿童社会情感注意力的缺陷有关。在日常生活中，学生需要处理和回应大量复杂的社会情感信息，包括关注教师和与同伴互动。由于新冠疫情限制，学生在在线学习期间需要盯着电脑屏幕，这些注意力要求和相关压力源有所增加。然而，缺乏研究调查社会情感信息对儿童注意力的作用。本研究评估了社会相关性和情感效价对儿童注意力需求的影响，以及其与症状和缺陷方面个体差异的功能关系，这些差异可能因新冠疫情而加剧。结果表明，社会和情感信息会影响儿童的注意力。任务表现也与负面情绪、社会压力和注意力焦点有关。本研究强调需要开展基于学校的远程学习干预措施，以帮助减轻新冠疫情给儿童带来的负面社会情感风险。潜在的有效途径包括基于正念的干预措施和注意力偏差矫正训练。
